MOHAI exhibit examines Lincoln legacy, and visitors log their views

Over the past year, particularly the last two months, voters have been comparing, critiquing and deconstructing the 2008 presidential candidates, trying to determine whether they would make sound judgments when in office.

It's not easy to decide upon a presidential candidate because being president is not easy.

Perhaps no past president understood this more than Abraham Lincoln, guiding the country at a time it was at its most vulnerable — an epic epoch of secession, slavery and civil war. Holding courageous to his conviction that the United States needed to remain united, Lincoln emerged from the constitutional crises he confronted to be considered one of America's greatest statesmen.

To carry out his agenda, though, Lincoln extended his war powers and stretched the Constitution, sacrificing civil liberties in the process. He suspended the right that protects citizens against arbitrary arrest (habeas corpus), and he jailed journalists and politicians who sympathized with the rebels.

How did Lincoln justify those expediencies? And was he correct in his actions?

An exhibit at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry offers a penny for Lincoln's thoughts, transporting visitors inside his stovepipe-hatted head to decide for themselves whether the president made the right choices.

"This exhibit focuses on Lincoln, but constitutional questions are always going to land before a president," said Leonard Garfield, the museum's executive director. "The ways those questions get answered are the ways we as a country define freedom."

Some 140 years after Lincoln, President George W. Bush goes through the anxious exercise of balancing the weight of a national crisis against the protections provided by the Constitution. And the president who follows him in office undoubtedly will confront his or her own constitutional predicaments.

"Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War" originates from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, with this the first West Coast showing. The exhibit features priceless copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery — both signed by Lincoln, as well as the stovepipe hat that Lincoln wore on the train ride to his first inauguration.

But the heart of the show is the contemplation of the choices Lincoln made to solidify the union and abolish slavery. An interactive feature asks visitors to be the judge for six Americans who were critical of Lincoln, and paid at least some price for it.

Lincoln, too, paid a price for those decisions, which were not always popular.

One part of the exhibit posits the question: "Must civil liberties give way to save the nation?"

"Lincoln wrestled with that question," Garfield said. "And we still debate it today."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com